


Consequences

by Hikari_no_Chibi



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hikari_no_Chibi/pseuds/Hikari_no_Chibi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumplestiltskin learns the price of deceiving his wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. It came to me in a dream.

“Stay back!” Elsa shouted. She took another deep breath, and the blizzard around her began to calm. “I can’t hold it in. Please don’t come any closer.”

She’d been hiding in the forest, so very much like the climes surrounding Arendelle, ever since emerging from the dark, cramped urn which had been her prison for the better part of a century. The magic was wrong here; it worked differently than it had before, though the ice in her veins remained. At first, with the slightly dulled thrumming and blur between what was and what could be, she thought all her problems were solved. Freedom! Control! A new time, and a new place, where they wouldn’t have to know what she’d done.

But it was just too much. Strange metal carriages without horses tore through streets made of a vile, black substance that she couldn’t place; men and women dressed similarly – trousers and the like – but no one wore the fine-spun, ice-blue gown that she favored; they were in the north again – she could feel the winter lands calling to her – yet it never seemed to snow here. She didn’t know how she knew that, except to say that she could taste it on the air. Here – wherever here was – the winter was not welcome, and that was as good as saying that she wouldn’t be welcome either.

So she went away, found a small lake near a vacant cabin, and went inside. She was better off alone. Alone was safe.

In this new world, where the magic was muted, with no one around to get in the way, Elsa almost trusted herself to control the tempest inside. It started small: a snowman, bringing with it sad memories and a familiar face; a small ice castle, a perfect replica of home, with little ice people on the streets; a palace – not a hulking, spiked palace, but a beautiful, elegant cascade – and gods above, but once she’d started the magic wouldn’t stop coming and she was losing control again.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way!” she yelled over the storm, toward the dark-haired woman who’d stumbled upon her hidden retreat. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry!”

The flurry cleared almost enough for her to make out simple shapes, and she looked for the fleeing figure of a petite brunette in the distance. Instead, she saw the woman leaning into the wind, easing closer to the eye of the storm.

“Let me help you!” the stranger shouted. “Give me your hand, it’ll be okay!”

“I can’t!” Elsa wept. Please gods, let the woman understand. Don’t let it be like Anna again.

“Where is the storm coming from?” the woman yelled again. Her voice was nearly lost on the wind.

“It’s me. It’s me. I can’t… you have to go! I can’t control it!”

The woman was nearly to her now, scraped red by the ice whipped up in the wind, but otherwise unharmed. She had blue eyes. Eyes the color of Elsa’s gown – her very favorite color. She found a scrap more calm within herself to control the storm.

“Just relax… what’s your name?”

“Elsa,” she replied. “Please, you must tell me – are they hunting me?”

The woman was shivering, but she shook her head firmly. “I don’t think so. I’m Belle. Something went wrong with the water flow downstream, and I mapped it back to this lake. I was expecting to find a beaver dam.”

Suddenly they were laughing, and Elsa could breathe. Beavers. Dams. Common things, not the mob calling for her crown; not the haunting specter of her crimes.

“Elsa, was someone trying to hurt you? Do you need help?” Belle asked.

Did she? No. Help meant people, and people were no good for her. In that moment, she didn’t know if she’d rather go back to the isolation high collars and thick gloves or endure the solitude of the storm, of powers spiraling out of control. She’d never meant to let it go so far.

Belle took Elsa’s hand.

“Don’t!” the Queen snapped, snatching her arm back. She slammed shut her eyes and fought against the cold snap.

A burst of magic hurdled outward, with Elsa at the center, and when she opened her eyes again Belle’s lips had turned to cyan. A single tear froze on the kind Belle’s cheek as their eyes met, and drifted – together – to the scar of ice over the smaller woman’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” Elsa wept. “I’m sorry, Belle. It hit your heart. I’m so, so sorry…”

“’S okay,” Belle managed, teeth chattering. “Accident.” She began to rub her arms and legs, as though she’d ever get warm again.

“Can you take it back out again?” Belle asked when she finally doubled over with pain.

“No,” Elsa breathed. “You’ll die. When the ice freezes your heart, you’ll die. There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

“True… Love’s … Kiss?” Belle managed.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I thought, once… but my love wasn’t enough, you see. It wasn’t enough. I’m so, so sorry.” Elsa was sobbing.

“Might… have… something…”

Belle reached down for her purse, but her fingers were too stiff. Elsa reached over and opened the bag for her.

Elsa could feel the storm rising again as she pawed through the satchel of unfamiliar items. She’d expected to find a potion or a scroll. A wand, even. It wouldn’t have helped, but there was nothing in here.

“What do you need?” she asked. Control. The key was not to lose control again. Don’t make things worse.

“Cell… phone?” Belle shivered.

Elsa shook her head. “I have no idea what that is.”

“T-tear out the lining,” Belle groaned, clenching up in another cramp. Her blood would be congealing now, tiny ice crystals forming as the muscle hardened and sputtered to a halt. She’d looked it up before, to find out how horrible it was. People who froze to death felt warm at the end, the slipped into sleep and never woke up; she’d been naïve enough to hope, once, that it might have been like that for Anna. She knew better now.

Elsa swore and ripped the satin liner from the bag. Between the satin and the leather, she found a knife. Her breathing stopped. Rumplestiltskin. The Dark One. She knew that name. He’d promised never to let her hurt anyone again, but he lied. _He lied_. And their deal came with too high a price. A hundred years trapped in an urn, and it was all for nothing if Belle died.

“Give me… the knife…” Belle panted.

She was going to stab her – and anything Rumplestiltskin made was bound to be powerful. Maybe it would trade a life for a life.

“Alright,” Elsa whispered. She passed Belle the blade, pressing her chest to the crooked tip. She closed her eyes again, but the blade never pierced her flesh.

“R-r-rumplestiltskin,” Belle managed, gasping all the while for breath. “Rumple, please come to me. I need a kiss.”

Nothing happened.

“D-d-dark One, I summon thee,” Belle tried again. She collapsed, and the ice began to over-take her arms and legs.

“Rumple…” The dying woman’s eyes met Elsa’s. Belle was well and truly frightened now, in a way she’d never been before. “P-please tell him I—“

But whatever words the lovely stranger wished to impart were swallowed up in ice.

Elsa didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t stop the storm any more than she could leave Belle’s corpse alone and cold in the forest. She was warm, like Anna. The kind of person people loved, a mid-summer’s day in the countryside. This time, she would truly atone for her crimes.

The Queen summoned a creature to lift Belle into its arms, cutting a swath of winter through the forest as they walked toward the town.

*

“Mom, does it feel cold to you?” asked Henry.

“Well now that you mention it, kid, it sort of does,” Emma nodded. She buttoned up her little red coat. “Come on, let’s go eat inside.”

They scooped up their plates and left the al fresco patio at Granny’s for a more traditional booth.

“Damn, my old hip’s killing me,” Granny groaned. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say we’re in for a storm.”

“It did feel a little chilly outside. I wonder—“

Emma’s question ended in a small puff of steam in the sudden chill as white powder began to blow down the street. Frosty tendrils clouded the window, and the snow began to come in earnest.

“I am here to confess my crimes!” a feminine voice shouted.

Emma rubbed a circle on the window with her sleeve, and saw shapes that she could not recognize in the town square, outside the library. It looked like a girl, slender and under-dressed for the cold, with a hulking, spiked monster at her side. The monster was laying something on the ground.

“I am here to confess!” the smaller of the two figures screamed again.

“Stay here, Henry.” Emma unholstered her gun and eased out the door. “Call Regina and tell her what’s up.”

“I want to confess!”

“I’m the sheriff,” Emma shouted back. The cold hit her like a ton of bricks. “If you’re causing all this with magic, then I need to tell you that the Mayor is coming, so if I were you I’d cut it the hell out.   Just tell me why you’re here, and I’ll decide if you’re under arrest.”

To her surprise, the snow did slow down a bit. The woman – a lithe, blonde-haired girl who couldn’t be more than 20 – stepped forward, and the hulking thing beside her vanished with a wave of her hand.

“I killed this woman.” She gestured down to the icy figurine. “It was an accident.”

Apart from the ice-witch’s trembling, the whole street went still. Emma a feeling she wasn’t shaking from the chill.

“If it really was an accident, then we’ll treat you fairly. We don’t… well, let’s just say there’s some ambiguity with the way that magic works here. Frankly, I’m not qualified to evaluate stuff like this.” She couldn’t even believe that it was real, but here they were – on Main Street – in the middle of a snowdrift. Emma edged a little closer and looked down at the exquisitely life-like statue on the ground. There was something metal clasped in its hand, and she could feel the bile rising in her throat. Rumplestiltskin’s name was printed down the blade of a dagger – the only part not turned to ice – and the face was undeniably the town librarian’s.

She looked around, frantically taking stock of their surroundings, and just barely registered the dark figure of Mr. Gold coming toward them.

Regina got there first.

“What the hell is going on? Is Henry safe?” asked the Mayor asked, glaring at her. “For you to ask for my help, after what you did, this had better be a matter of life or death.”

“Henry’s fine,” Emma answered, struggling to keep her tone steady. “But I don’t think Mr. Gold will be.”

She gestured to Belle as subtly as she could, and watched Regina’s eyes widen as she put two and two together.

“Well, well, Queen Elsa,” Gold purred, finally approaching the scene. “How ever did you get here, dearie?”

*

Gold took stock of the scene, but he’d known (or suspected) the cause from the moment he spotted the first snowflake. Storybrooke functioned in a cursed stasis, rooted in the idea that nothing ever changed. Even when the curse was broken, the seasons fluctuated from late spring to early autumn without ever really hitting an extreme.

In 30 years, this was the first Storybrooke snowflake.

Belle would love it, of course, but then she could see the best in everything. There was no shortage of snow in the mountains, and he still remembered the day his little maid had dared to hit him with a snowball in his courtyard.

Queen Elsa, apart from her own neuroses and unparalleled magical strength, was ultimately not very threatening, so he left his shop at a relaxed pace.

Whatever she wanted, he was certain they would be able to work out a price. Probably the Cricket could help with a few things, he reflected, if she didn’t insist on going back into the urn again.

“Well, well, Queen Elsa. However did you get here, dearie?” He added a bit of flair, so that she would recognize his new face.

“Gold,” said Emma, planting herself firmly in front of him. “Before you do anything, I need to tell you—“

“Yes, yes, yes, you’re an officer of the law. I’m aware, Miss Swan,” he quipped. “Now what’s all the fuss?”

“Do you really not know?” Regina asked.

Oh joy, apparently today was going to be a family reunion again. Well, he couldn’t complain. The Charming clan (and Regina) had left him and his new bride unmolested, as instructed, for the duration of their honeymoon, but all good things always ended.

“Gold, listen to me,” Emma tried again. There was just a hint of desperation to her voice.

“But that doesn’t make sense!” Regina interrupted, incredulity writ large across her face. “She had your dagger in her hand, so you must have… unless this isn’t really Belle?”

Rumplestiltskin’s heart clenched. He looked from disbelieving Regina to desperate Emma, and settled on the guilty, shivering Queen of Arandelle.

“What have you done!” he roared. The magic poured off of him, gouts of flame that would have burned anyone less than the Ice Queen, the Savior, and the Evil Queen. “What have you done to her!”

“It was an accident!” Elsa wept, dropping to her knees. Tears froze to her face. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to, please… She was so kind to me, and she could have killed me with that knife, but she didn’t and I don’t know why! Please, Rumplestiltskin. Please! We made a deal – you promised that I wouldn’t hurt anybody!”

But Rumplestiltskin was past hearing, lost in sorrow and flame.

_She called for you. She called for you to come to her, and you didn’t hear, because that’s not your knife._

“Gold, stop it!” shrieked Emma, shielding them all from the blaze. He wasn’t in control of it, wasn’t consciously summoning it, but the fire engulfed him all the same.

_Her heart stopped and turned to ice, all because you were not worthy of it. You killed your wife._

“Stop it, Belle wouldn’t want this!”

_You will never have a family again, as long as you live. Your fault. It's your fault they’re dead._

“Neal wouldn’t have wanted this!” Emma shrieked again. He registered that the shields were faltering, that Regina was needed to help bolster them. They were family. And right now, they stood between him and the monster that killed his love.

“Let it go, Rumple!” the Queen shouted.

But he couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t stop the flames. He wept for Belle, for Baelfire, and for all the desperate souls left broken in his wake, every sacrifice in vain.

Rumplestiltskin fell to the ground, suit charred and magical reserves empty. In 300 years, he’d never found the limits of the Dark One’s magic – there was always more inside him, for a price. Exhausted, he dragged himself to Belle’s side, and the other women had the good sense to get out of his way.

He rested a hand on her cheek. It was icy, but preserved perfectly, and connected to perfect lips and a long neck where her pulse used to flutter.

Gold kissed the frozen lips, waiting for something – anything – but it never came. He collapsed further into the frigid embrace, ready for sleep but praying for death. Belle’s body was too supernaturally cold for him to touch it without pain, but they said freezing to death eventually brought dying men the most wonderful dreams.

Well, the cold never bothered him much anyway.


End file.
